A typical nightly conversation around here goes something like this: As G ruminates about the beginnings of WWI, he'll ask me what my book is about and I'll shrug and mumble, "Oh, two brothers in a third world country who are dealing with internal struggles and stuff," or "A girl who is wondering about her future..." BUT! Oh, but. He can't make fun of me or he knows the next time he picks up a book based on a movie based on a video game based on a computer module...he's really in for it.
Happy New Year's Eve, peeps! Read on!
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And now, the moment I'm sure you've all been awaiting: my top five reads of 2013. These are in no particular order, and they were not all necessarily published this year; I just read them this year.
1. The Ace of Skulls, by Chris Wooding.
All good things must come to an end, and this book marks the end of Wooding's "Tales of the Ketty Jay". (The third installment, The Iron Jackal, made it into my top five reads of 2012.) In The Ace of Skulls, Wooding leads his readers on a crazy adventure involving the crew of the airship Ketty Jay, as they try to stay out of the the civil war that is threatening to engulf Vardia. Even the most insignificant person can change the course of events, a nod to the book's title. The Ace of Skulls is a card in the game of "Rake," a game in which Darian Frey--the Ketty Jay's captain--has made and lost small fortunes. Depending on the cards in a player's hand, the Ace of Skulls can make a winning hand worthless, or a losing hand unbeatable. I can't recommend this series enough, but if you're going to read it, start at the beginning with Retribution Falls.
2. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, by Jack Weatherford.
I think a lot of people know who Genghis Khan is--or at least, they think they know who he is. Given his exploits, the part of the world he conquered, and the amount of time that has passed since the zenith of the Mongol empire, Genghis Khan (not even his real name) has attained a somewhat mythical position in general Western thought. He was real; his victories were real; his empire was real. Together with Mongol historians, Weatherford retraced Genghis Khan's journey across what is now Mongolia as his empire spread across most of Asia and changed the course of Western, Islamic, and Chinese civilization. If you think you know who Genghis Khan is, you probably don't. I was certainly disabused of that notion after reading this book.
3. Mars, by Ben Bova.
Bova has written several novels about the exploration of other planets. Mars, in my opinion, is one of the better of these stories. Set in the not-too-distant future, the book describes the first human landing on the Red Planet, comprised of a multi-national team of about 50 people. Central to the story is Jaime Waterman, a geologist from the Southwestern United States and a Navajo. On live television from the landing site on Mars, Waterman utters a Navajo phrase, which causes a firestorm of political upheaval on Earth. Jaime deals with the fallout of his remarks against the backdrop of exploring the new planet. While not as exhaustive as Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars--the astronauts in Bova's book were not attempting to colonize the planet--it is still a glimpse of how the first manned mission could be achieved.
4. Templar One, by Tony Gonzales.
Set in the vast universe of the computer game "EVE Online", Templar One chronicles the acquisition, and subsequent deployment, of immortal technology used by ground soldiers. In the EVE universe, a war is raging amongst the capsuleers of the four main factions in the New Eden star system. The capsuleers--often called "Empyreans"--have access to immortal technology in the form of clones with flash-updated memories, meaning that they can fly their starships into combat knowing that they will live to fight another day. If a capsuleer's ship is destroyed and his body with it, he will awake in a clone at separate location, with all of his memories, persona, and psyche intact, and will be able to jump into another ship and rejoin the fray. Templar One tells the story of Vince Barrabin--the first ground soldier to utilize immortal technology, and a loyal servant of the Amarr Empire. The EVE game is an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game--say THAT ten times!), and is an incredibly complex user-driven game complete with an in-game economy, government, and factional warfare. As a former EVE player, I can appreciate the setting of this novel, but even without any experience in EVE I believe it stands on its own as a good science-fiction story.
5. The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War One, by Edward M. Coffman.
Published in the late 1960's, The War to End All Wars is a fascinating look at how America entered World War One in April 1917. Rather than re-hash the origins of the conflict and cover the events of the war leading up to America's involvement, Coffman starts the reader out in early spring 1917. Woodrow Wilson declares war on Germany, and everyone cheers America's entry into the conflict…and the next day they have to take a hard, sober look at how to get a military that is not really on a war footing across the Atlantic Ocean and into the fight. The first half of the book deals mostly with the logistics of preparing the military and the nation to go to war, and also with the political squabblings of how the Americans would be used once they got to Europe. The second half covers military contributions of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in fighting along the Western Front. The roles and actions of men who would be America's leaders in World War Two are also described; in this book, you will encounter Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, Captain George S. Patton, etc. As with all subjects, the details become more clear the closer you look, and our nation's involvement in World War One was complex, nuanced, and fraught with difficulty. A great book for anyone interested in the closing phases of the Great War.
So there they are--my top reads of 2013. Happy reading!
C-nerd says you can only get through five books when they are 1,000 pages long.
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